Blessing thought the issue was over when she passed by Tina’s door on her way to the local bathroom that is behind their ‘face me-I-face-you’ house in Mararaba, a suburb bordering Abuja and Nassarawa state, little did she know that it was just the beginning of her ordeal.
Speaking to LEADERSHIP WEEKEND recently, the commercial GSM operator who is still recuperating from her third degree burns says that Tina was her rival, “we were sharing the same boyfriend but I have never quarreled with her even when we meet in our boyfriend’s house who is a mechanic, but she always goes out of her way to look for my trouble; making snide remarks whenever she sees me as well as laughing and clapping her hands I never bothered to reply because I knew she was asking for trouble. On the day we fought, she came to the man’s house and met me cooking, I slept there and he had gone to work so she came with two of her friends and started insulting me. I became angry and responded so we started fighting and I managed to beat her up before people came to separate us. Incidentally, we live in the same house as co-tenants, I was already dating this guy before she moved into our house and yet she went ahead to date him because she saw the kind of money he was spending on me.
The next day after our fight when I came home to dress for work, I decide to take a bath and on my way, Blessing was sitting outside with others, I greeted them but she refused to answer. I thought she was cooking but when I came out of the bathroom and headed to my room, she took the hot water she was boiling and poured it on my back. I screamed and people came out and started beating her before she was taken to the police station. I was rushed to the hospital. It’s been eight months but the scars are still there and my skin is still red. The case is in court and members of her family have been begging me to withdraw the case and promised to settle my hospital bills but I don’t think she deserves that, she is wicked.”
Aisha’s case is similar to Blessing’s except that in her case, her rival used razor blade to cut a side of her face.According to her, the scar is still there even though the pain has gone. “I got it from my rival who got jealous because the man called off the relationship and chose me, it was God that saved me. I was rushed to the hospital when I fainted because I lost a lot of blood, she wanted to scar my face because she was jealous that I was more beautiful than her, but God saved me. I didn’t know that she had been boasting to people that she would change my looks until that day when people came and were insulting her for carrying out her threat. I have since left the guy but the scar is still on my face, anytime I have money I will go for surgery.”
Mr. Timothy Alkali, a psycho analyst said that,” romantic jealousy is defined as a complex of thought, feeling and or action which follow threats to self esteem or the existence of a relationship when those threats are generated by the perception of a real or potential attraction between one’s partner. Jealousy is any aversive reaction that occurs as a result of a partner’s extra-dyadic relationship that is real, imagined or considered likely to occur. It is conceptualised as a cognitive emotional and behavioral response to a relationship threat. In the case of sexual jealousy, this threat emanates from knowing or suspecting that one’s partner has had intimate knowledge with a third party. In the case of emotional jealousy, an individual feels threatened by her or his partner’s emotional involvement with and/or love for a third party.”
There are different types of jealousy depending on the situation at hand because jealousy is an intense emotion that is associated with the loss of services or outcome associated with other individuals. This intense emotion can be seen or experienced in family situations, at work, in romantic relationships and even between friends. Sibling rivalry is a common form of family jealousy and can affect all ages and different members of any family. Jealousy can arise from lack of attention from a specific member in the family. More attention towards another member of the family can cause this emotion or the emotion can be seen through comparison to another member in the family. This type of jealousy is once again a result of losing some sort of attention or services that someone once had or that they believe that they had. Romantic jealousy can be experienced in long-term or short-term relationships. One partner can feel the emotion of jealousy arise if the other partner is paying more attention or time to someone else. To lose services from one partner and have their attention directed towards someone else does not have to be in a romantic way. One partner could be spending more time with a friend that no romantic feelings could ever develop.
The colour green is often associated with jealousy and envy, giving birth to the expressions “green with envy” and “green-eyed monster”. People do not express jealousy through a single emotion or a single behavior they instead express jealousy through diverse emotions and behaviors which makes it difficult to form a scientific definition of jealousy. Scientists still do not have a universally agreed upon definition for jealousy but instead define jealousy in their own words, as illustrated by the following examples:
Romantic jealousy can be classified in some factors which include socio-biological factors, cultural and historical factors, personality factors, relational factors, situational factors and strategic factors. Socio-biological factors deal with reproductive strategies.
In men, they can only ensure paternity by restricting the access or involvement of other men. Women are more inclined to find resources in a man to be more important than actual reproductive opportunities. Men use the following tactics more than women; submission and debasement intersexual threats and violence. It has been proven that men and women have similar states of emotions of jealousy as socio-biological factors. Relational factors as well as emotional factors have been found to vary on comparison levels of commitment to the relationship as well as investment and the level of alternatives in the relationship. Situational factors include critical events that may endorse jealousy in both men and women. Situational factors are very common and can be easily stimulated.
Last is strategic factors which includes were “individuals are rarely aware of the socio-biological or cultural factors that promote a particular communication, jealousy and envy occurs because people can experience both at the same time. A person may envy the possessions of someone who also happens to be a romantic rival. In fact, some may even interpret romantic jealousy as a form of envy. A jealous person may envy the affection that his or her partner gives to a rival which he/she feels the affection should be to him or herself alone. People often use the word jealousy as a broad label that applies to both experiences of jealousy and experiences of envy but jealous people feel the fear of loss, suspicion of or anger about a perceived betrayal, low self-esteem and sadness over perceived loss, uncertainty and loneliness, fear of losing an important person to another and distrust.?